I returned to The Specola to shoot another roll of film, do some more sketching, and although going to primarily study the taxidermy I always find myself standing longest in one of the rooms right at the end of the maze of stuffed birds and pickled snakes. This penultimate room holds the work of modeler Clemente Susini who, amongst other anatomical wax works, created three women in various stages of dissection.
Strange however, considering the subject, there is very little cold and clinical about the models. These women are not presented in a manner making them ideal tools for teaching about human physiology. Instead they refuse the lie still, playfully toying with a braid, coyly gesturing to their breasts and pilose pubis. Their heads thrown back on to silk sheets as their back arches, flushed cheeks, pert nipples; these women’s eyes, cast forever in wax seem set half shut in the last moments of orgasmic languor rather than the last moments of life.
I wonder if I have been studying a room of life sized 17th Century pornography. Under the guise of anatomical studies, these ‘three graces’ do seem to want to satisfy more than a lust to learn about medical matters.
